1. Field of Disclosure
The present disclosure relates generally to improvements in checking out consumer products to be purchased at retail point-of-sale (POS) environments, using POS-based checkout stations located therein.
2. Brief Description of the State of Knowledge in the Art
In the POS environment, items to be checked out (i.e. purchased) are scanned at a retail POS station using a bar code symbol reading system interfaced with a host system that is connected to a local area network, on which the retailer's product price database is installed. The use of bar code symbols for product and article identification is well known in the art. Presently, various types of bar code symbol scanners have been developed for reading bar code symbols at retail points of sale (POS).
In demanding retail environments, such as supermarkets and high-volume department stores, where high check-out throughput is critical to achieving store profitability and customer satisfaction, it is common to use laser scanning bar code reading systems having both bottom and side-scanning windows to enable highly aggressive scanner performance. In such systems, the cashier need only drag a bar coded product past these scanning windows for the bar code thereon to be automatically read with minimal assistance of the cashier or checkout personal. Such dual scanning window systems are typically referred to as “bi-optical” laser scanning systems as such systems employ two sets of optics disposed behind the bottom and side-scanning windows thereof. Examples of polygon-based bi-optical laser scanning systems are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,229,588; 4,652,732 and 6,814,292; each incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. Commercial examples of bi-optical laser scanners include: the PSC 8500-6-sided laser based scanning by PSC Inc.; PSC 8100/8200, 5-sided laser based scanning by PSC Inc.; the NCR 7876-6-sided laser based scanning by NCR; the NCR7872, 5-sided laser based scanning by NCR; and the MS232x Stratos®H, and MS2122 Stratos® E Stratos 6 sided laser based scanning systems by Metrologic Instruments, Inc., and the MS2200 Stratos®S 5-sided laser based scanning system by Metrologic Instruments, Inc.
With the increasing appearance of 2D bar code symbologies in retail store environments (e.g. reading driver's licenses for credit approval, age proofing etc.), there is a growing need to support digital-imaging based bar code reading—at point of sale (POS) stations.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,540,424 B2 and U.S. Publication No. 2008/0283611 A1, assigned to Metrologic Instruments, Inc, describes high-performance digital imaging-based POS bar code symbol readers employing planar illumination and digital linear imaging techniques, as well as area illumination and imaging techniques.
Also, U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,137,555; 7,191,947; 7,246,747; 7,527,203 and 6,974,083 disclose hybrid laser scanning and digital imaging systems, in which a digital imager is integrated within a POS-based laser scanning bar code symbol reading system. In such system designs, the digital imager helps the operator read poor quality codes, and also enables the hybrid system to read 2-D symbologies. The use of digital imaging at the POS is able to capture virtually every dimension and perspective of a bar code symbol, and is able to make more educated decisions on how to process code symbologies.
Today, conventional bi-optical laser scanning systems, digital imaging systems, and hybrid scanning/imaging systems deployed at POS stations have very limited capabilities for displaying price and other product related information that might be captured or otherwise generated at the POS station, and thus the host system and its peripheral devices have been relied upon to display such information at the POS station. This has resulted in increasing the physical footprint of such conventional POS checkout systems, which is undesired because of the great commercial value of countertop space at the POS station.
Thus, despite the many improvements in both laser scanning and digital imaging based bar code symbol readers over the years, there is still a great need in the art for improved POS-based checkout systems supporting improved ways of displaying visual and graphical information during retail transactions, while avoiding the shortcomings and drawbacks of prior art systems and methodologies.